Kimberly B1971

I am the mother to a 16 yr old girl and a 14 yr old boy. I know that my kids and I talk about sex all the time. No topic is off limits...we watch lifetime teen movies together and every monday it is Secret Life of the American Teenager...for anyone who has never watched it, its all about sex..

So how often do you talk to your teenager (s) about sex, and if you have both a girl and a boy, do you find yourself talking about sex to one more than the other? Are you talking to them more about abstinance or safe sex?

My daughter is 16 years old and is the joy of my life. She has her moments of teenage angst, but she is a pretty good kid. She does have a boyfriend, but he is a year younger than her so neither has a drivers liscense or a car. The other day, his mom called to tell me that her son wanted to take my daughter out to the movies for Valentine's Day. I think this is so sweet, but I just don't feel comfortable sending her out unchaperoned. I don't want to be one of those super strict moms but I also know that times have changed since I was her age, and kids are faced with the same kinds of pressures, but it seems at a higher degree. I told her that I don't mind her going to the movie with her boyfriend, but I insist on chaperoning the date. I promised them that I won't sit right next to them or behind them, but I would be in the theatre somewhere.

Do you think I am being unreasonable? And if she were your child, how old would she be when she went on her first unchaperoned date...

I have asked this question before not long after I found out that my cockapoo Pepper wasn't the cocker spaniel that we thought we had bought. That was a year ago, so I thought I would ask it again to see if others have had similar situations...

Our Pepper was bought from a BYB I am ashamed to say. I was ver naive at the time, but have become so much better educated since then. He was bought as a Cocker Spaniel and everyone, even our vet thought he was, but Pepper was so poorly bred that he became very sick, and during his illness he couldn't be groomed. When his hair grew out, it was thick and curly like a poodle and when I googled cockapoo, there was a dog on the screen that looked just like my pepper. I felt stupid and ashamed that someone fooled me like that.

Has anyone else had to deal with a dishonest breeder?

I did not ever intend to be a rescuer...I didn't even own a dog until 2 yrs ago when we bought my baby Pepper from a BYB. It was this that educated us on how criminal back yard breeding can be. When Pepper was 5 months old, we found a black puppy on our country road walking with his head down. Upon closer inspection we realized that this poor puppy had been neglected and abused. He was so thin, and on his back from the middle to his tail he had a horrible infected burn. Someone had burned this poor dog. We took him to an emergency vet, and 300.00 later his name was Bandit and we were on the road to recovery. Today he and my cockapoo are 2 yr old, and right now he is happy and healthy laying in my lap.

We have rescued other dogs since him, but he is the one we will never forget. So for those who either intentionally or unintentionally began rescueing animals, what is your most memorable rescue? I would love to hear your stories...

My cockapoo Pepper is the joy of my life, but there are times when he is just grumpy. He will get a sick look in his eyes (come on Moms...u all know the look that even kids get in their eyes when they aren't feeling well), and he will have little to no patience for my kids (both teenagers) or his puppy brother. He gets clingy with my husband and I. I was telling my sister about it, and she said that maybe he has a headache. So is there a medication that I can give him over the counter that can give him if these are headaches?

Thanks for your help!

My 10mth old Cockapoo Pepper is having horrible skin problems. He was poorly bred by a hideous BYB and was born with a compromised immune system. He currently has staff and demodix mange. Our vet is almost out of options and doesn't have a plan for him anymore. They want to refer us to a dermatologist who comes to a neighboring town only once a month. The unknown is so scarey to us and we are worried about the cost. We are trying our last treatment now, and if that doesn't work, he will have to go.

If you have ever had to go see the dermatologist for your dog please give me an idea of cost, what they do, etc, so maybe it won't be so scarey for us. I would appreciate any feedback.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30056776@N05/30663226...

I think it is safe to say that we all love dogs, or we wouldn't be on here. It is probably also safe to say that we all have our dream dog...the breed of dog that we would want more than any other. Some of you may already own your dream breed and if you do, please tell me his/her/their name(s). But my question is this...

What is your very favorite dream breed of dog that you would have at this very moment if you could. (if you already own one, please tell me about them!!)

I will pick a best answer, and when I do, I will tell you what my dream breed is.....

First let me say that this is very embarrassing for me and my family. Each and every one of you are going to think that we are so stupid, and honestly, I might choose to agree with you. But with that said, we still have to figure out how to fix this problem--no matter how idiotic we all are. So please be gentle....LOL

3.5 years ago in May 2005, we adopted twin black cats from a local shelter. They were litter mates, male and female. We went to meet them on Mother's day when the shelter was closed, and the lady took us back to see them. One of them jumped into my husband's arms and started purring, and he fell in love. She told us his name was JoJo, and that his sister was somewhere....

The other cat wasn't as friendly and in fact was kind of mean. She has a rough meow, and didn't want to be around anyone. Her fur was alittle more corse than her brother who was soft and fluffy. They called her Chloe. Her body was alittle bigger and he was petite. Other than that, you couldn't tell them apart, and to this day, I still have problems telling them apart. The person who owned them before us had had them spayed/neutered, declawed and microchipped when they were small, and had sent their medical records with them. They had been well cared for at one time in their life.

Anyway, we took them home and put them in quarantine. We found out that Chloe was sick. We took her to the vet and she had an upper respiratory infection. JoJo got sick soon after so it was vet visits for all! After she got better, she became the sweetest cat. She didn't always get along with my alpha male, but I figured that she was an alpha female and they were just going to have spats.

When we started getting dogs, our alpha male Gilbert, began spraying everything with the dogs scent on it. Well, not long after I noticed Chloe doing it too. I thought that was strange but I started watching for her going to do it and if you reprimanded her, she wouldn't spray, she would just meow at you and walk off in a huff.

So all of that brings us to 2 days ago. Now we have 3 dogs in the house along with the 4 cats. 2 of the dogs are ours and we are keeping them, but the 3rd is going to Mass. to a new home. All three of the dogs were fixed a few weeks ago, and my son was asking me how come dogs privates are out there for the world to see but cats' privates are all smushed together. How did that work? He wanted to know. To show me what he meant, he flipped over JoJo and said, "See, how close they are together?" It didn't look right to me, so I flipped over Chole, and looked at her. Still not right, so I used Gilbert for comparison and the light bulbs came on. Chloe was the male, and JoJo is the female. When we adopted them, the shelter got them mixed up.

Now we have a problem. For 3.5 yrs we have called them by the wrong names. The vet has their records and its the records for the wrong cats. My kids are very upset because neither wants to give up their cats genders. I know that sounds funny, but they have taken on these names, and everything that goes with them. To us, Chloe looks like a female, we call her Big Mama (because he/she weighed like 16 lbs), and he/she likes to groom everyone's hair (people and animal). My son is refusing to call her Chloe now because he says she isn't a girl. Just she same, JoJo looks like a male to us, we extended his name to Joseph Josiah, he/she is sweet, and small and loveable.

So what do you do...any helpful suggestions will be welcome and I will pick a best answer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30056776@N05/30663226...

I didn't know how to make that a link, so I hope it will work. This is a picture of our foster baby Princess. She is approximately 6 mths old and is pretty tall. Obviously, she is a terrier mix--probably rat terrier or feist, but she mixed with something. I was wondering if anyone could tell what.

She has black spots under her coat. Her skin is even spotted on her tummy. She also has webbed toes. So, what do you think?

FYI: Princess is going on a trip from Texas to her new home in Massachusetts soon. She was found in a storm drain emaciated. I don't think she could have lasted much longer. We rehabilitated her and her new owners in Massachusetts have paid for her shots, her spaying, and for her to be microchipped to go on her trip. I think they are super lucky to be getting her. She is a super sweet dog.

We have an 8mth old Lab/pit mix that we rescued when he was about 5 mths old. He was half starved and burned from his back down to his tail. It took us a month or more to get his outward scars to heal, but there are inward scars that are proving harder to deal with. Bandit has crate anxiety. Most dogs love their crates and find peace being in them, but Bandit doesn't. He cries and howls when he has to be in his. He still isn't completely potty trained so he has to be crated when we leave the house and at night when we sleep. We have tried giving him treats when he is in the crate, bones, etc. so that he will see good things happen in the crate. He has gotten alittle better but not much.

Just this past week, he had his neutering surgery and he had to be crated for a week while he recovered, and the vet had to give us some calming meds so that he wouldn't shred his bedding. That is what usually happens: He howls, barks, shreds his bedding, and if we put a blanket over the crate to calm him, he pulls the blanket through the bars and we end up having to cut up the blanket to get it out.

We don't believe in having outside dogs (although we do make sure that he has plenty of outside time and walks as the weather permits), so putting him outside at night and when we are gone is not an option.

Does anyone have any other ideas or products that could help us with his crate anxiety?

It is alittle embarrassing to admit, but my husband and I were fooled by a dishonest puppy breeder. When we bought our Pepper, we had never bought a pure bred dog before. In fact, I had never bought any dog before. All of my dogs were pound puppies. I am ashamed to say that we bought a puppy from a backyard breeder that we knew nothing about, and she told us that she had unregistered cocker spaniel puppies. They were 6 wks old and Pepper was the prettiest little puppy!! As he got older, his poor breeding began to show in bad health problems. We had to quit grooming him and when we did, we noticed that he no longer looked like a cocker spaniel but instead was a cockapoo. Even our vet was surprised by the change in his appearance once we stopped having him groomed.

We have heard of other people being fooled by these kind of dishonest evil people, but have never heard any stories first hand.

We have since become informed of the issues that face puppies bred by BYB and puppy mills. We try to educate others so that they do not help support this type of puppy breeding.

We have an 8mth old Pitt Bull/Labrador mix puppy who currently weighs 60 lbs. We are all wondering how much he will weigh when he is full grown. He was 30 lbs at 5mths but was a rescue and was at least 10-15 lbs underweight when we got him. He has gained 30 lbs in 4 months and is a beautiful big baby. To give you an idea of his size, he has the head of a Pitt Bull and the body (long legs) of a Lab.

We have also been debating on when he will quit growing. I say at a year but my husband says 18mths. Anyone out there know for sure?

Thanks!!

My husband and I own two dogs...a 7mth old cockapoo (Pepper) and a 7mth old Lab/Pit mix (Bandit). They are both indoor dogs but they have to go out to potty, for walks and to play. This past week we were without electricity for over 5 days due to Ike and we spent alot of time outside with the dogs during the evenings to keep them from being too hot inside. One day, Bandit took off through the barbed wire fence into the neighbor's pasture, and was having so much fun that we couldn't get him to come back. Even funnier was that none of us could get past the barbed wire fence to get to him. Well, I wouldn't worry if it wasn't for the fact that dogs bothering/chasing the cows is a horrible offense in our part of the world, sometimes punishable by death (being shot by the ranchers). We don't want anything to happen to him, but he can't always be on a leash. We take him out on one to go potty or to go on a walk, but if he needs to go out and play or run, he can't be leashed.

We want to teach him that he has to stay in our yard, not the pasture, but Im not sure how to do that. Now, that day, we did get him to come home, and he was scolded and then put for a 5 min time out in his crate and then closely supervised after that. But I would like to feel some assurance that he won't do it again, the kind of assurance that you get with a well trained dog.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

We were at Petco with our dogs (6.5 mth olds Pepper-cockapoo, and Bandit-lab/pit mix) walking around enjoying ourselves when we go to turn down an isle and there is a man with a full blooded brindle pit bull and a smaller baby pit bull in a buggy. The man's pit bull sees and and tries to head down the isle towards us. He wasn't growling or barking or anything. He was just pulling his master trying to get down the isle.

Bandit (lab/pit mix) suddenly puts the hair up on his back and starts growling and showing his teeth. He was very agressive and he isn't like that. We have been to Petco before with him. He takes training there every Tuesday. There is even an agressive Rotweiller in our class and he isn't even that way with him. He has been around other dogs outside of Petco. We have an older pit bull down the road, 2 austrailian shepherds, and a border collie, and he has never been agressive with any of them.

He has been food agressive at home, but only with Pepper, never us. But then he and Pepper will share the same water bowl at the same time and he doesn't have any problem with that.

We immediately pulled him away from the situation and scolded him. I have never seen him act that way to another dog. So does anyone have any ideas what could have been going through his little (well, not so little since he does weigh 45 lbs) mind when that happened? I would appreciate any help or suggestions.